


Asunder

by monicawoe, SDSlanderson, Vebira



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Body Horror, Captivity, Cover Art, Established Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Gen, Human Experimentation, Illustrations, Other, Post-Venom (Movie 2018), Protective Eddie Brock, Protective Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-07 10:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18618472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SDSlanderson/pseuds/SDSlanderson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vebira/pseuds/Vebira
Summary: Eddie and Venom have grown accustomed to their new life together. They patrol every night, keeping San Francisco just a little safer, and keeping Venom fed. But one night, they’re captured, and separated.Eddie wakes up to find himself imprisoned in a glass cell and, for the first time in six months, completely alone.





	Asunder

**Author's Note:**

> words by monicawoe  
> art by Vebira (center art) and SDSlanderson (art at end of fic)
> 
> written for the 2019 Symbrock Big Bang!

 

**“Why do we need a new suit?”**

“Because we want to look presentable at Anne and Dan’s wedding.”

With a running leap, Venom bounded to the next rooftop. They’d had a long night of fighting evil and were both ready to get back home. **“We look presentable in the suit we already have. You said so before our last work interview.”**

“This isn’t up for debate, we’re getting a new suit. They’re having a sale at Macy’s—“ Eddie stopped, cocking his head. “You hear that?”

**“Of course. Our hearing is far superior to your limited human sense.”**

The whirring sound grew closer, and something small rose up from the alley between the buildings. Narrowing their eyes, Venom looked at the hovering thing. The gears in Eddie’s brain clicked into place. He’d seen this before. “Hey, that’s—“

The sonic blast caught them off guard, and they staggered backwards as a dozen more of the hovering things popped up around them all of them blaring an unbearable painful pitch. Venom collapsed, covering their ears as the soundwave tore them apart. It felt like it was all around them, from the ground and the sky and all of it hurt.

Life Foundation drones, Eddie thought, as his vision tunneled, and then went completely dark.

#

Eddie woke with a gasp. Disjointed images and sensations flashed through his mind: the drones, bone-rattling sonics, mercs dropping out of the sky all around them, the blades and spotlights of the helicopters, tranq darts piercing his skin, the press of a boot on his back, rough asphalt against his cheek. Fear--his own, and Venom's.

But as he sobered, that fear became a deep stifling terror, because it was just his fear. He couldn't sense Venom's fear at all. Now, where Venom’s presence existed, all Eddie could feel was an absence. He was alone. The space inside him, the parts of his cells that belonged to Venom were empty. Eddie sat up, heart pounding in panic.

The room was small and tiled and stunk of antiseptic, lit by that same sickly blue he’d seen all over Drake’s labs. Life Foundation drones attacked us, he remembered. Drake was gone, but the Life Foundation was still around, operating under new management and a public shareholders oversight committee. Or that’s what the press release had said, anyway.

To Eddie’s left was a glass wall. He pushed himself to his feet, noted that he’d been dressed in hospital clothes—plain white shirt and drawstring pants. The tiles were cold beneath his bare feet as he made his way to the glass, pressed his fingers against it, gingerly, testing to see who was watching, straining for a look down the hall.

It wasn’t the same facility he’d snuck into nearly a year ago. Or at least, not any part he’d seen then, but the design was similar enough. The Life Foundation was an international company, still worth hundreds of billions, even after the scandal of what they’d done. In a just world, they would have been shut down completely. Eddie had said so himself in an editorial piece that got buried in the back pages of the San Francisco Sun. But some corporations were so large they could weather nearly any storm, and the Life Foundation did carrying on without Drake, proudly declaring itself an ally of the people.

Across his cell was an empty wall, and slightly further down he could see a heavy electronically controlled door, with a control panel beside it, red light indicating the lock was active. There was an identical door to his cell too, set in the side wall, so there had to be a matching control panel on the other side. Eddie focused on that as best he could, trying to ignore the sickening emptiness in him, and the panic broiling in the back of his mind. Where was Venom? Somewhere here? In another lab, being poked and prodded?

A flare of anger shot through Eddie and he slammed his hands against the wall again. “Hey! Hey, I want to talk to somebody!”

An intercom crackled from somewhere behind him and an irritatingly calm woman’s voice said, “Calm down, Mr. Brock. Step away from the wall.”

Eddie, feeling even more contentious pressed himself bodily against the glass. “Make me.”

“As you wish.”

And before the voice had faded fully, the wall sparked beneath Eddie’s skin, a hard, painful prickling like static shock a hundred times as strong. They’d electrified the damn wall somehow. “Fuck, that hurt.”

“That was set to low. Do try to behave yourself, Mr. Brock.”

Eddie’s fists curled and he had to physically fight the urge to slam the wall again, just on principle. He paced instead, studying every inch of the room. There had to be a way out. He tried to think of it, humorlessly, like one of those ‘Escape the Room,’ scenarios people with boring lives liked to do for fun. Somewhere in here was a tool that’d help him get out. It might not be obvious, but it was somewhere. Hidden in the floor, or a code discreetly hidden in the tiles of the ceiling.

“Just so you’re aware,” said a new voice from the intercom, a gravelly, more masculine one that he couldn’t quite place, “even if you somehow manage to get out of here, you won’t get far.”

“Yeah?” Eddie snarled, glaring at the speaker, for lack of a better place to focus his anger. “And why’s that?”

“Because,” the voice paused and wheezed, then coughed, before continuing. “This time I took extra precautions.”

A chill raced down Eddie’s spine and he headed back to the wall, slowing his steps when something moved into view. A wheelchair, holding a man with seriously scarred skin that turned to face Eddie with pure vitriol in his eyes.

“Drake?” Eddie swallowed down his shock. “Wow, you really look like crap.” He couldn’t quite voice the part where he saw Drake die. Explode into a fiery rain of body parts and rocket fuel along with Riot.

“Should have seen me six months ago.” Drake’s mouth curved, the skin on the left side of his face crinkling like wax paper. “And I had contingency plans for this type of event. Always figured somebody would try to take me out.” He chuckled to himself and it sounded just a tad more manic than he had before. “Just didn’t think it’d be someone as pathetic as you.”

“Guess we didn’t do as good a job as we thought,” Eddie said, unwilling to show even an ounce of fear. If Drake was still alive, then this whole mess was way way worse than he’d thought. Venom was in serious danger. Which meant he had to get the fuck out of the lab as soon as he could. “Ready for a rematch?” Eddie blustered as best he could. He was starting to feel dizzy, faint maybe from lack of food or the repeated stress of adrenaline.

“Soon,” Drake said, lips pursing as he formed the word. His hair was barely there, sparse uneven peach fuzz covered half his scalp, the rest was as bare and raw-looking as his face. “But first you’re going to help me.”

“Why the hell would I ever help you?”

“To atone for the sins of your past,” Drake said, raising his arms, palms open, like a benediction.

“My sins?” Eddie scoffed with disbelief. “I wasn’t the one killing people by using them as lab-rats.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve killed plenty since then, haven’t you?”

Eddie ground his teeth. Criminals, murderers, they’d all deserved it, he thought, but didn’t say. What point was there in arguing morals with Drake? “Where is Venom?”

Drake smiled again, baring teeth. “That’s your other reason, your main motivation.”

“If you hurt them, I swear I’ll—“

“You’ll what? Kill me?” Drake rolled his eyes. The left one was blood-shot and cloudy.

“I’ll make it stick this time.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll tell you what you will do. You will cooperate. You will undergo every test, every poking and prodding we put you through, because if you don’t, if you so much as lift a finger against anyone here, I’ll incinerate your friend.”

Eddie’s gut curdled, and he reflexively reached with his mind for that empty space where Venom belonged. “You’re bluffing.”

“You sure about that?”

“You don't give two shits about me. You want a symbiote. You lost Riot, and now you—“ With a sickening lurch, Eddie realized he was right. “Now you want Venom.”

“I want what’s mine. And they’re all mine. I brought all of them here, I achieved symbiosis with their leader, like I was meant to, I was going to save this whole damn _planet_ until you and Venom ruined everything,” Drake snarled.

“Wow. You haven’t changed at all,” Eddie said.

Drake glared at him a moment longer, then rolled back, away from the window, and turned his back to the cell. “Get some sleep, Eddie,” he added, as he started to head down the hall. “You’re gonna get put through the ringer tomorrow. Easier for me if you don’t die right away.”

“Oh yeah, well I wouldn’t want to make things hard on you!” Eddie snapped. But Drake was long gone.

With quivering legs and arms, Eddie sunk to the floor, and pulled his knees in towards his chest. Exhausted and distraught, he squeezed harder, pressing his mouth against the thin fabric covering his legs, and shouted a muffled, “Fuck,” in impotent rage.

#

Sometime the next morning, or afternoon—he didn’t really have a solid grasp of time here—a slot in the front right corner of the room opened, and a tray of food slid in: a brick of dense bread, some kind of heavily processed chicken and mashed vegetables that tasted like something in between carrots and watery potatoes. Eddie wolfed it all down. He was ravenous, not inhumanly hungry like he’d been with Venom, just like a person who hadn’t eaten anything in a day or three.

It occurred to him, almost as an afterthought, that he had no concrete idea of how long he’d been held captive here. He had a good sense of time, generally speaking, but didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious while they’d...while they’d separated him from Venom.

Thinking about Venom made Eddie’s pulse race and he took a deep breath trying to settle himself again. Panicking wouldn’t get him out of here any faster. And he had to find a way out, because nobody was coming for him. At least not yet. It would take a few days before anyone really noticed he was gone. Maybe even a week or two. And how the hell would they know where to look? _He_ didn’t even know where he was, not really.

The slot in the wall opened again. Eddie squinted at it, trying to see if there was a mechanism he could potentially use to get out, but it was barely wider than a mail slot. He slid the tray back inside and watched as it closed. There was a barely audible scraping sound, the tray sliding into some automated mechanism.

A half hour passed and nothing happened: no sound from the intercom, no nurses, nobody at all in the hallway. Another hour. And another.

Maybe this was how they wanted to break him. Nobody to talk to. No contact with anyone. Just one gloating taunt from Drake and then nothing. Food supplied by the walls, even a self-cleaning bathroom partition in his cell.

He’d discovered that the whole cell floor was self-cleaning, when, during a moment of pique, he’d pissed outside of the bathroom area just so he’d have something else to complain about, and a few minutes later, thousand of circles: pores opened in the floor and suctioned it all away until the floor was clean and dry again.

They could keep him here indefinitely, assuming they had the supplies. Which he had to assume they did. And meanwhile Venom was—

Eddie smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead, trying to clear his head, but he couldn’t, not this time. If this is what they were doing with _him_ , then their attention, their active, painful torture, was more than likely focused on Venom.

“What do you want from me?” Eddie asked the room. “Huh? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, this hotel sucks.”

Of course, there was no answer. Even when Eddie started drumming on the walls again, even when he started to rattle off threats of bodily harm to Drake and everyone else to the tune of “Another One Bites the Dust.”

They left Eddie alone for another three days, judging by the number of meals dispensed. He didn’t eat the last one, too angry, too worried about Venom. He sat against the wall, closed his eyes, and prayed.

Not to God, who, if he existed, had stopped listening a long time ago. Eddie prayed to the world around him, to the same force that had brought him and Venom together, to whatever it was—fate or kismet or just random, beautiful fucking chaos. Something Out There had brought them together, and if they were meant to be, like Eddie knew bone-deep that they were, then whatever that force was might take pity on him now.

 _Please, please just let us talk,_ Eddie thought, _I just need to know they’re okay._ Reaching out with his mind to that emptiness inside of him, he found it still held a perfect imprint—a mold of what Venom felt like—an after-echo, and Eddie listened to it, felt that vibration and imagined cupping it with his hands, blowing on it like a dwindling ember until it grew and grew, a humming warmth in his fingers and toes and brain. He was filled to the brim with that wavelength, a living amplifier, and he touched his hands to the wall until they, too, were thrumming with the same pitch.

The walls trembled, ever so slightly as they sent his signal wide, through the whole complex. And Eddie closed his eyes, and then he heard an answer:

**_Eddie._ **

_Venom? Are you okay?_

**_Eddie. Help._ **

_I’m gonna find a way out of here and I’ll find you. I swear,_ Eddie thought desperately. 

Heart hammering in his chest Eddie slammed his hands against the glass. The wall barely shuddered, and as he kept striking at the ungiving surface, despair bubbled up amidst his rage until there were tears coursing down his cheeks. With a wordless shout of fury, he hit the wall once more and this time it wobbled considerably. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Enough to trigger some light outside the cell to turn red. A soft hiss came from behind him, and Eddie turned his head to see a vent had opened in the back wall. It was roughly the same size as the food slot, and it was spewing gas, he realized, as he took a step closer and saw the wavering air. He thought to hold his breath, but it was too late. He could feel his body starting to shut down.

“I want to see Drake,” he said, with as much steadiness as he could muster, “right now,” before he crumpled to his knees and his face slammed against the floor— rather painfully, he noted, before his vision tunneled and then blinked out along with his hearing and everything else.

#

They woke him again what felt like instants later, with a shot of adrenaline, Eddie assumed, based on the way his heart was racing.  He bolted upright, or tried to, but found himself rather thoroughly restrained. His arms and legs were strapped down, two heavy leather straps on each arm, three each on his legs: at mid-thigh, just below his knees and around his ankles. He was alone in a small, constrictive room, in a metal chair with mobile metal appendages that were moving: one set held the now-empty syringe, another was picking up some kind of metal tool. He didn’t want to find out what it was for.

 _“Look over here, Mr. Brock,”_ said a voice.

Eddie strained to turn his head towards the sound of the voice, but it was pointless. His head was strapped down just like the rest of him. “Look, where?” he gritted out, as the snakelike arm in front of him raised a small bright light.

_“Watch the light.”_

So he watched the light, because not doing so would gain him nothing. As his initial panic started to fade, he noticed a dim reflection in the dark glass across from him. His head and neck were covered in a web of sensor pads. They were doing an EEG.

“If you’re looking for my brain, trust me, I have one,” Eddie said, and it sounded more nervous than he would’ve liked, but what can you do? “It might be a little hard to find is all.”

_“Please keep your head still, Mr. Brock.”_

Eddie stopped talking. He was trying to come up with a witty comeback, but couldn’t. He remembered Carlton’s threat, and didn’t want Venom to suffer (more, who was he kidding, they were already making Venom suffer, oh fuck he had to get out of here).

_“Play the audio.”_

“What?”

A speaker turned on, somewhere behind his head and there was a sound, a frequency he felt, more than heard. He knew that frequency, knew it with his bones, with his cells, with his heart.

“Venom?” Eddie asked. Hoping the audio went both ways.

The sound grew in strength and Eddie felt it tug at him, pull at his insides like the world’s strongest magnet. “I miss you, too.”

The sound—Venom’s voiceless pull became softer, like they were trying to stay calm, but Eddie could feel the shakiness beneath it. Venom was blustering, just like Eddie had been.

“I’ll get you out, I promise.”

_“Phase B,”_

“Just. Tell me where you are, and I—“

The sound—Venom’s wordless call became a pained, keening scream, and Eddie felt that, too. It hurt like the MRI had, like the helicopters, it was—“Stop. Stop!” He shouted.

But of course they didn’t stop. Whatever they were doing to Venom, wherever they were doing it, it only got worse and more painful and Venom’s pain was unbearable and Eddie had to get to him. He strained against the bonds, arms and legs pushing as hard as they could against the straps. And then the one holding his right ankle snapped. Eddie kicked out and the next strap beneath his knee gave way and he kicked out, still half-blinded by Venom’s echoes of pain. Something clattered but it didn’t matter, he had leverage now. He braced his foot against the bottom of the chair platform and pushed until his right arm and thigh broke free and turned, grabbing for the robotic snake arms that were headed right towards him, both wielding syringes.

“What, no gas?” he asked. His head felt clearer, and it wasn’t just the adrenaline. Their shared pain was gone. Whatever Venom had been suffering had stopped.

Eddie snarled as the two metal snakes twitched in his grip. “You gonna drug me some more? Fine. Just leave Venom alone! Don’t hurt them! Hurt me. I don’t care what you do to me, I—“

There was a prick in his backside and he whipped his head around to see another robotic arm pulling away from his flank with an empty syringe. “Oh, fuck you. You…” his mouth stopped working and his limbs gave out, sending him slumping back onto the chair.

#

“You know I gotta give you credit, Eddie,” Drake was saying. “You really don’t know when to give up.”

Eddie jerked awake, pushed himself up to a sit and immediately regretted it, his head pounding. Whatever they’d given him was potent, and his vision trailed behind a fraction of a second, leaving a blurred trail of color and light.

Drake was in the hallway again, in his chair, hands folded in his lap, watching Eddie with some vile mix of pity and admiration. “Most people, in your position would be more cooperative. But not you, no. Even when you’re completely—I mean without a _doubt_ , one thousand percent—beat, you’re still making threats. Making _demands_.”

“Stop hurting Venom.”

“I’m sorry,” Drake scoffed. “What was that?”

“I said,” Eddie pushed himself to his feet and took an unsteady step towards the glass. “Stop hurting Venom.”

“Hurt?” Drake cocked a crooked eyebrow. “After what you both put me through? Why would I stop at _hurt_?"

Eddie lunged forward, and rammed his fist against the glass—his knuckles exploded in pain, but he didn’t care. “I’ll kill you.”

“Please. You already tried that once and failed. What makes you think you’re ever getting out of that box?” He shifted in his chair and turned one of his hands over. It was only then that Eddie noticed Drake was holding something. “You curious how long you were knocked out just now, Eddie?” Drake asked, “Or what else we did while you were sleeping?” He shifted his chair back and turned, heading towards the right wall, where the food tray slot was.

“Make yourself useful,” Drake snarled. Turning away from Eddie, he added, “Give it to him.”

Eddie steeled himself, ready for the room to zap him or fill with gas again, or something else terrible meant to hurt him into behaving. But instead, all the room did was open the meal-delivery slot. Instead of food, the tray held something else. It looked like a shriveled, burnt carrot at first glance, or maybe a charred hot dog, and Eddie wondered if this was some kind of super poorly thought out psychological torture. Give him crappy, inedible food and see if that made him cooperate. Drake was still watching, so clearly he wanted to see his reaction first-hand.

Maybe the shriveled up thing wasn’t food at all, maybe it was a stick or some kind of root, Eddie couldn’t tell from where he was standing. So he inched over, still expecting to be shocked or shot at with a tranquilizer dart. The closer he got, the more the dread in his gut grew, spreading through his veins and sending a chill skittering up his spine. He’d seen something like this before, he realized: at the bottom of the bay, the night Venom had sacrificed themselves to save Eddie. With trembling fingers, he took hold of the husk gently, and his fear turned to white-hot rage. He was holding a lifeless piece of Venom.

“What did you do?” Eddie growled, adrenaline giving him more than enough energy to climb to his feet, and throw himself bodily against the glass wall. His hand still clutched the piece of symbiote, unwilling to let go, unwilling to accept what the evidence was telling him. “What did you do to them? What the fuck did you do?” Eddie shouted.

But Drake just smiled, and turned away.

Useless rage boiled through Eddie’s veins as he watched Drake head out the hallway door. After he was gone, the adrenaline left Eddie all in one go and his legs gave out. He sunk to the floor and clutched at the lifeless husk of black, grasping for that thread in his mind that had let him hear his missing other half earlier. But he was too panicked, too upset to find it.

Drained and miserable, Eddie let his head hang and cried, dry, heaving sobs. After a while he couldn’t even do that anymore, his ribs ached too much and his vision started to stutter from too much stress and not enough food. “I’m so sorry. Whatever they did to you, I swear I’ll make them pay.” He grabbed the husk tighter in his hand, using the last of his strength to clutch it tighter, irrationally afraid of letting it go, and felt it start to crumble in his grip. “Oh no,” Eddie said, looking down at his hand. He’d squeezed it to hard, crushed a part of it, that now looked like little more than ash, crumbling in his sweaty palm. “No, no, no…” he muttered, cupping his hands next to each other, heart caught in his throat.

The ash glimmered beautifully, it looked, he thought, a little deliriously, like space, like Venom—glistening the way that— it took Eddie another beat to realize that the ash really was glistening and that it was melting, not dusty and brittle anymore but melding—flakes becoming pebbles that melted like wax, sinking down onto his palm. The whole tendril was melting, and as it did, the color shifted from black to blue with lighter streaks. More like the ocean.

Eddie stared at it, the small blue pool in his hands, and tried to reach out again with his mind, but couldn’t feel the connection, even though he knew Venom was still alive. Because there was no way they’d died. He’d know. He’d know.

Which meant that this, in his hands, was somebody else.

An hour passed, and another and another, and still there was no reaction. Dinner came and went, but Eddie wasn’t hungry. He stayed where he was, afraid to move his hands, afraid to spill a drop. He reached out again and spoke, whisper quiet, asking, “I’m Eddie. Who are you?”

In the dimming lights he couldn’t be sure, but he thought the pool of blue rippled, like a pebble had struck its surface. “Can you help me find Venom? They’re trapped here. Those people are torturing them, and I—“

The small puddle rippled again, harder this time and then sunk down into his skin all at once, like on an exhale.

Eddie listened, waited for a voice, a thought, anything that wasn’t his, but instead he just felt incredibly tired.

The lights dimmed further, and he moved towards the mattress, embedded in the floor, sitting on it, head slumped against the wall. He didn’t want to sleep, afraid of what his dreams would conjure up with nothing but terrible news and panic fueling him.

He sat there, his breath heating the tiny patch of metal wall near his mouth. Exhausted, he sank down to the mattress, curled himself into a ball, listening again, until he imagined he could feel another heartbeat mirroring his own—could feel their hearts beating together. Not in sync, like Venom was, but with a fraction of a second delay, a stutter separating the two of them. They weren’t a match, they weren’t much of anything, Eddie realized. The symbiote, whoever they were, was following Eddie’s heartbeat as though on autopilot. It was a reflex, a knee jerking after a hammer-tap. There was no active consciousness sharing his mind.

But there was _something_. A memory of someone. Eddie focused on the faint emotion he identified only as not his own. A foreign pain, too alien to be something he could identify, the cold of space, the agony of being pulled from the ocean—no, not the ocean, something larger, an organism made of one body and millions of minds.

Sleep pulled Eddie under with a violent tug, and he felt himself fall, through the floor of the lab, through the ground beneath, through the Earth itself and into space until he was adrift amongst the stars.

He sped through galaxies, stars streaking by faster and faster until they became ribbons of light, like Venom’s streaks, their skin the color of the endless universe. He hurtled forwards, unable to see, without a clue where he was, except that he was very, _very_ far from home, and when he finally began to slow he was headed for a planet—a small one it seemed, maybe a moon or a meteor, but whatever it was, it was a sphere of undulating liquid darkness—its whole surface one big ocean, and it spoke to him, with thoughts and images and fear and wonder and he fell down and drowned in it and his body dissolved, his cells breaking apart until he was made of the same stuff as the sea until there was no _he_ , there was only _them_.

And all around them and inside them was everyone else. No separation between one and the next, they were the sea and the sea was them and it moved in time with their thoughts, eddies and waves of ideas and emotions. They couldn’t formulate words like this, but they had no need to. All of them were connected, and as long as they were together they could stay like this forever. But they wouldn’t, because something deep-rooted, the same thing that gave them joy and hope and ideas, made them want to explore, to see the rest of the world, to become one with something else in the universe--join with everything else until they found a union even more perfect than this. So the mass extended a million tendrils, reaching outwards further and further, started to tear apart, separating as each one became more and more individual, more and more its own. There were millions of them, ready to leave this place, and all they needed was a way to travel.

Then a star made of metal and flame sped towards them, and gave them a way.

Eddie woke with a start. There was a web surrounding him: thin, blue strands spanning the whole room, running from him to the wall, to the ceiling, and back in a dizzying, intricate pattern.

It _was_ a pattern, and there was something familiar about it, just out of sight, but there, meant for him to see. Eddie let his eyes unfocus, with a sense memory of those magic eye puzzles that were 3D, but only if you looked at them right.

Eddie stood, slowly, and the strands stayed in place. He moved a step to the left and then to the right, shifting his stance slightly until the pattern started to come into focus. He took a breath and let his vision blur more, reaching out with the part of his mind that recognized the sea in his dreams, that could understand the Klyntar and their language.

The pattern shimmered in the strands, a latticework within the web, showing lines and squares and—a map. He was looking at a map. Dots moved inside one of the squares, people and—and there he was, a little glowing dot representing Eddie, right in the middle of a square. And eight squares up was another dot, that quivered with exactly the same frequency as his. Venom.

“There you are,” he said, heart pounding with a fierce longing. “I’m coming for you.”

He reached out towards the map, traced his finger over it lightly and said, “Whoever you are... _thank you_.”

The map quivered under his touch and then collapsed, spattering liquid to the ground. It didn’t congeal, didn’t move again of its own volition. Even when Eddie dipped his finger into it, experimentally, it stayed inert. Whatever memory of consciousness had been there, was gone, used up.

Eddie closed his eyes and recalled the map in every detail. He knew where he had to go now, he just needed a way out.

Thoroughly spent, but more hopeful than he’d been since he got here, Eddie settled back on the cot and watched as the floor’s divots opened and drained the remains of the symbiote matter.

He’d get a chance soon, he was sure of it.

#

“Why you?”

Eddie blinked open his eyes, but didn’t bother turning towards the voice yet. He knew who it was. “I’ve asked myself that a lot.”

“The atrophied samples we kept have never responded to me,” Drake said, and then a little more loudly, “And I was their leader.”

Eddie did turn then, and sat up, yawning nice and wide, before answering, “No, _Riot_ was their leader. You were just a meatsuit.”

Drake scoffed. “Did the tissue sample tell you that?”

“Didn’t have to.” He looked Drake over. His scars seemed like they’d healed a little more, soft tufts of hair growing on a patch of his scalp that had been nothing but scars the last time he’d seen him. “The damage wasn’t all from the explosion…” Eddie spoke his thoughts out loud as the realization solidified in his mind, “Riot was eating your organs,” Eddie concluded, and he could tell by the twitch in Drake’s jaw that he was right. “Guess you two just weren’t meant to be.”

“Just my liver and kidneys. Easy enough to buy new ones.”

Eddie huffed in disbelief and came closer to the glass until he was standing just inches away, right across from Drake. “For you, maybe. Who’re you knocking off the waiting list by doing that, I wonder?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Matters to them.”

“Not for long,” Drake said, without an ounce of compassion.

“Organ failure and third degree burns, but you didn’t just survive...you’re healing. Quickly. How’re you pulling that off, I wonder?” Eddie narrowed his eyes, looking at Drake’s skin. The scarring _had_ lessened considerably. “Not skin grafts. You’re doing something else.”

“I know you’re dense, Eddie, but you can’t possibly be this stupid. You were a reporter once, weren’t you? You know what I’m doing, and you know how.”

Eddie shook his head. “You can’t bond with Venom, they’d kill you. And Blue and Yellow are dead, so—“ the gears clicked into place and Eddie felt queasy all over again. “They’re dead, but you’re trying to force them to bond with you anyway, aren’t you?”

“They were never dead. Just dormant.” Drake smiled. “Like I said. They’re a superior species. They don’t die as easily as we do.”

“Riot did.”

“He was torn apart by ignited rocket fuel...”

The last sentence came out too steadily for Eddie’s liking. Drake was lying, hiding something.

“Riot isn’t dead is he?”

Drake’s smile flickered, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “He’s as dead as I need him to be,”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You’ll find out.” Drake gave him a patronizing nod. “But first, I need you to earn your keep. Stand on one foot.”

The command was so bizarre Eddie couldn’t even come up with a witty comeback fast enough. “What?”

“Or don’t.” Drake pushed a button on a keyboard attached to his chair and a slot by Eddie’s feet—the food slot opened.

As Eddie stared at the slot, with a sinking feeling, he knew exactly what was coming. Something moved behind him. Another pane of glass rose up, less than a foot behind where he was standing, trapping him, effectively cutting him off from the rest of the room. “Hey! _Hey_!” he shouted, banging on the new partition.

“Relax,” Drake said. “It’s temporary. It’ll go away as soon as you finish doing what we need you to do, and you can have your swanky studio apartment back.” He smiled. “I promise.”

Eddie turned back to glare at Drake, and noted the new heap of tendrils that had been delivered through the food slot. Drake wanted him to repeat what he’d done last night. Who knew how many times he’d make him do it. “I hope you choke in your sleep.”

“Same to you. After you do your job.” Drake turned away, and the hallway door opened at his approach.

Eddie stood there for a moment, staring at the brittle heap—stringy blue and yellow tendrils, like dehydrated vegetables, or some kind of root. Part of him wanted to stay where he was, not bond with them,  because not only weren’t they Venom, but they weren’t even really alive anymore. What he was doing was giving them some kind of jolt, bringing them back temporarily from their version of rigor mortis, and if he did anything with them while bonded, he’d use up whatever was left of them.

But what else was he supposed to do? Drake had him over the proverbial barrel, and he knew it, too. If Eddie didn’t do whatever Drake said, he’d take it out on Venom again. With a resigned sigh, Eddie walked closer to the pile of symbiote tissue and nudged one of the tendrils with his toe, then sat down next to them, and pushed his fingertips into the heap.

At first, nothing happened. The symbiote remnants stayed brittle and unmoving. Eddie closed his eyes and took a deep breath, in and out, reaching out for Venom like he had before, opening himself to that dreaded emptiness inside his chest where his other half was meant to be. He felt a twinge of response from Venom, distant, muddied behind layers of interference, like they’d put up even more walls between them. Something neither of them could reach through.

Beneath his hands, the dried-out tissue began to warm and soften. Eddie curved his fingers down, felt the symbiotic matter curve along with his knuckles. He took another deep breath and pulled in through his pores, pictured himself filling with it. When he opened his eyes, the last of the pile had melted and was flowing into him in a rapidly disappearing puddle of yellow and blue.

He opened his mind, listening, waiting for a flash of memory or anything else they had to share. But inside there was nothing but silence. A painful blast of sound came from all around him, and he cried out in pain, pressing his hands over his ears as the sonic wave built in pressure.

The symbiotic mass spilled out of him even faster than it had gone in, and he struggled against it, trying to hold it back but it slipped out of him, the pain too intense, too overwhelming. The floor opened its pores wide, and pulled the yellow and blue waxy fluid down. Not all of it though, Eddie kept his hands where they were, held on tight, pictured his veins constricting, clenching down around the last few drops. It wasn’t much, less than a half cup of coffee. Oh god, coffee would be good, Eddie thought, near hysterically, he missed coffee.

With a squelching sound, the floor suctioned the floor clean, most certainly sending the now viable symbiotic mass back to Drake. Eddie was helping him. It made him sick to think about. And angry.

But he didn’t have any time to dwell on that anger. The slot opened and another batch of tendrils was shoved in again. They wanted him to do it again.

And again, as it turned out, and then one more time. The sonics got more painful each time, like the repeated exposure to the symbiotes was making him even more sensitive to the noise. But despite the barrage of sound, he fought back, as hard as he could, fought to keep some of the symbiote deeper inside of him when the Sonics were shaking it loose. It was more of a reflex than anything else. Or maybe intense pettiness, given strength by a lifetime of being a stubborn asshole.

The rest of the symbiotes—everything but the few teaspoons he’d held back, dripped out of him and the floor dutifully cleaned it up.

But inside of him, he still held that last little bit of blue symbiote—Eddie knew it was Blue, though he couldn’t have explained why. He focused, breathing in and out until it shifted inside of him, traveling back up his arm and settling near the back of his throat. He had a plan, foolish as it might be.

The partition slid back into the floor, and Eddie pulled his knees to his chest and waited.

#

Eddie didn’t have to wait long to put his plan to the test. Less than an hour passed before the vents began to hiss. With considerable strain, Eddie focused again on the tiny bit of symbiote inside of him and stretched it up and down, covering his nasal passages, the back of his mouth and his lungs. He inhaled as a test, still breathing, but as though through a filter. The gas filled the room, and seconds later, the wall slid open and three men in hazmat suits came in and lugged him up.

Feigning unconsciousness was easy. Eddie’d done it plenty of times before. He let himself droop, heavy and limp, as they hefted him onto a gurney. They didn’t strap him down, which was their mistake, and an opportunity he wasn’t about to pass up. He waited, as they passed through one door and another, mentally tracing the blueprint in his mind, and throwing a silent thanks at the piece of symbiote, regardless of if it still had the capacity to understand him. They were headed closer and closer to where the bright pulse of Venom had been on the map but then turned the wrong way.

Eddie opened his eyes, assessed the position of his three escorts, and with all the force he could muster, kicked at the one by his feet and sent him staggering back, then quickly threw an uppercut towards the chin of the man on his left. The punch landed, and the man went down, while the man on his right lunged down, trying to grab him. Eddie weaved away from his arms, turned on the gurney and kicked hard, sending him hurtling against the glass wall of another lab. His head slammed against the glass and Eddie quickly threw another punch, knocking him out cold. Eddie jumped down from the gurney and head butted the third, who was still disoriented from the kick—as he fell, Eddie grabbed hold of his keycard and hoped it would get him where he needed to go.

The first door he came to opened, and he hurried to the next, following that map in his mind. He likely didn’t have much time. The security cameras would have seen what happened. But all he had to do was make it to Venom. He’d figure the rest out from there.

Using the keycard, Eddie passed through three more doors, following the pull on his heart as much as the map in his mind’s eye. He was getting closer to Venom, only another two passages to go through and then— Eddie stopped in his tracks, and wasn’t entirely sure why, at first. He’d stopped in front of a glass wall. A cell, not dissimilar to the one he’d been held in. This one was smaller, darker, holding two people-sized cylinders. But there was something about the one on the right.

Eddie leaned closer, squinting through the glass. The symbiotic mass, still gelled at the back of his throat, wriggled to life and spilled out of him, through his mouth and nose, all at once, in a rush and spattered against the glass, running up and down in front of the cylinder.

“Huh?” Eddie didn’t understand. But at least now he could contextualize what had happened, why he’d stopped. Recognition. Instinctive and base, but enough for the symbiote’s lingering memory to get his feet to stop. The blue liquid flowed across the glass, seeping through the top of the door. It flowed inside and streamed up the right cylinder then squeezed through its seams.

Eddie watched fascinated as the icy fog in the cylinder swirled and began to dissipate, until a woman’s face became visible. “Dora?” Eddie asked, shocked. Doctor Skirth had died six months ago, the week that everything had changed. Another of Drake’s victims. But here she was, on display like a trophy.

The symbiote ran up her cheeks, seeping into her mouth. Eddie held his breath, waiting, for Dora’s eyes to open. Was she really dead? Or had the Life Foundation kept her alive like a guinea pig all this time?

A door hissed open somewhere down the hall and Eddie snapped out of it, sprinting towards the nearest exit. A split second before Eddie held the card to the reader, the door opened, and he got hit with a taser. Eddie collapsed, body jerking as the volts raced through him.

#

“The symbiotes leave something behind. In your brain, did you know that?” Drake asked.

Eddie, who was still facedown on the floor in whatever room they’d tossed him in now, pushed himself up on his forearms.

Drake was in the room with him, sitting on an office chair, hands clasped loosely in his lap. “Dora had it, Isaac had it, all of our test subjects had it, including you.”

Eddie was about to snap back that he wasn’t a test subject except he remembered where he was being held, and what they’d been doing to him.

“It’s to help them communicate with us,” Drake went on, tapping his finger against his temple. “But it’s more than that.” He brought his finger down lower, turning his head to the side, as he traced a circle by the base of his skull. His hair had grown back fully, Eddie noted, and his facial scarring was nearly all gone. “See, the symbiote grafts a piece of itself to the brain stem—that piece fuses permanently with us. A whole new organ, not human, not symbiote, somewhere in the middle. It’s what let’s them talk to us, and use our bodies. But I think it’s more than that. I think it tells them about us, what they learned, like an instruction manual. So the next symbiote knows how to steer you. We removed Isaac’s so we could analyze it. His was tiny, barely pea-sized, the symbiote hadn’t been in there long. We couldn’t figure out what purpose it served exactly. We figure it establishes the telepathic link between symbiote and host. But you…” he pointed at Eddie. “You talked with Agony.”

 _Agony_? Eddie puzzled, but the answer was there, it was the blue symbiote’s name.

“Or it talked to you. Whatever the case, yours is far more developed than Isaac’s was, more than mine, even.”

Eddie gave Drake his smarmiest smile. “It’s not the size that matters.”

But Drake ignored his jab. “Once the link is fully developed between symbiote and human, like with you two, it works both ways. You can send your thoughts to Venom too, right? Control it?”

Eddie looked at him, but didn’t dignify him with a response. _Not about control,_ he thought bitterly, _we have an understanding. A union._

“Look, either you cooperate, and tell me what I want to know, or we dissect you until we figure it out. One way or the other, I’m getting my answers.”

“What do you want to know?”

Drake leaned forward and couldn’t quite mask the eagerness in his eyes, “Where is their homeworld?”

“Huh?” The question truly caught Eddie off guard. “Didn’t you—send a rocket there?”

“I did. But they inhabit a meteor. And its trajectory...” he paused, scowling. “...changed.”

Eddie laughed. Partially just to make himself feel better for a few seconds. “You lost it. You lost their _planet_.” He laughed once more, relishing Drake’s deepening scowl. “Why don’t you just send out another expedition fleet.” He looked around. “Oh right, because the world thinks you’re dead, you’re wanted for murder. Probably a little harder to access all those billions you made.”

“I want more symbiotes. If you don’t help me get me my own, I’ll take Venom.”

"Venom will never bond with you," Eddie said.

"I don't need them to be willing," Drake said, and pushed a button on a panel by his side.

Behind Eddie, a metal panel retracted, exposing a tank embedded in the wall. It was small, as long as Eddie’s forearm, and half as deep, and it held a half dozen dried out husks, clearly recognizable to him now as inert symbiote matter. But this wasn’t the same blue-ish hue of the last batch that had been tossed in his cell. This was grey with red. A familiar coloring that put Eddie immediately on edge. _Riot._

“I don’t even need them to be alive,” Drake added, “in fact, it’s easier if they’re not.”

Eddie took a step forward. As much as he didn’t want to help Drake, he’d rather give him this than have him hurt Venom. So he took another step, and stuck his hands into the tank, touching the symbiote matter—Riot’s corpse. “How many of these do you have?” he asked. It was stupid to prod Drake, he knew that, had learned firsthand it only led to more trouble, but his tongue always got away from him, particularly when he was nervous.

“Enough to make me whole again,” Drake was less than a foot behind Eddie, watching the tank over his shoulder. “For a little while anyway. Until I get what I need.”

Swallowing down his nerves, Eddie closed his eyes and tried to focus, tried to call on that part of him that was forever bound to Venom, to use it to reach for him the way he had the last time he’d reanimated symbiote husks. But his heart was racing, and he was all too aware of Drake right there, watching him. There was no guarantee that doing this was going to stop Drake from hurting Venom. In all likelihood, it would just make him stronger, too strong for Eddie to stop when he inevitably did go after Venom.

That thought, that fear, took hold of Eddie, and with a full body shudder he pulled away.

“Performance anxiety?” Drake sneered. “Maybe you need some motivation.”

His tone told Eddie exactly what he had in mind. “No, please don’t—“

But Drake was already striding across the lab. He pushed a few buttons on a computer and another panel slid up, revealing another, slightly larger tank, holding—

“Venom!” Eddie lunged for the tank, acting purely on impulse, but Drake stepped in front of him, shoved him with way more strength than he should have had, and sent him crashing back towards the husks.

“Don’t even think about it.” Drake picked up a metal rod that sparked with electricity. “It’s a sonic disruptor—like a cattle prod for symbiotes. Make another move, and I’ll use this to make them hurt more than you can imagine.”

Eddie could imagine all sorts of things, and he didn’t want Venom to suffer anymore than they undoubtedly already had since they’d both been captured. He stuck his shaking hand back into the tendril-filled tank, but kept focusing on Venom, reached out thinking, _I’m sorry, buddy. I swear I’ll figure a way out of this._

And Venom moved in response, Eddie felt, more than heard, an answer, _Miss you._

“Fuck,” Eddie muttered, impotent fury making his pulse quicken. _Miss you too_. He reached out again, taking in the details of the room, looking for the controls that would open the tank. Beneath his fingers, the dried symbiote tissue began to soften.

It melted up his fingers and sank into his skin with a burning sting, like acid seeping into his veins. There was a flash, a brief flicker of images in his mind: the homeworld, the rocket, tearing Venom from Eddie’s body—a memory of their last battle, and underneath it all a steady pulse of violence. What was left of Riot was frozen in those last moments of life, forever mid-combat. Eddie suppressed a wince and let out a cry: half-pain, half-relief as the sonics kicked in and the symbiote remnant pulled away. Eddie stepped away from the tank and turned to look at Drake questioningly.

“Now what?”

Drake didn’t answer, but he moved to the tank, and pushed another button, extruding the liquified symbiote mass down a tube into some other hidden container, hidden from view. A few seconds later, a green light on the wall below the tank turned on, and another panel slid open, revealing a series of ampules. Drake took one and pulled an injector from his pocket, sliding the ampule into place.

“You inject them?” the revulsion in Eddie’s voice was genuine. _What the fuck? “_ That’s not symbiosis.”

“No.” Drake brought the needle to the crook of his arm and depressed the plunger, eyelids fluttering as the grayish symbiote mass was forced into him. “But it’s close enough.” He smiled at Eddie. “Plus, there’s no consciousness left when they’re like this. Just their biological mass.”

“There is,” Eddie thought back to the visions of their homeworld, the distinct emotions. “There’s a memory, a sense of who they were.”

“I don’t care about any of that, I don’t give a shit about who they were. I want their biological advantages.” Drake smiled as a thin grey sheen rippled up and down his arm, forming ridges before sinking back into his flesh. “This is exactly what I want.”

“But it’s temporary.” Eddie nodded to himself. Without symbiosis, whatever Drake was doing wouldn’t last.

“Right again. Maybe you’re slightly less stupid than I thought. Yes, it’s temporary. But you’re going to get me a fresh crop and then I’ll figure out how to lobotomize them, and make a permanent graft.”

“You’re insane.”

Drake reached back for another ampule, loaded the injector and sent a fresh dose into his veins, his eyes glazed over, sickly white and oil-slick grey streaked with red stretched to cover his upper arms and chest, but it wasn’t enough—they were incomplete stringy tendrils, doing their best to mimic muscle structure but with insufficient matter.

“What are you planning on doing with it?” Eddie asked.

“Why would I tell you that?”

Eddie laughed at that. “You’ve been telling me all of your other evil plans. Why stop now?”

Drake took a step towards him, lips curling. “My goals haven’t changed. I want to help humanity evolve. Only now the scale’s a little different. I don’t care about saving everybody else anymore, just myself.”

“So, nothing’s changed then.” Eddie shrugged, trying to keep his fear nice and buried. “We done for tonight, or...?”

“Not even close.” The symbiotic tissue covering Drakes chest pulled back and ran down his arm, forming a large elongated hand with fiercely sharp talons. He grabbed Eddie by the neck. “Find me their home world. Now.”

Eddie blinked at him dumbfounded. “I don’t know how to do that.”

Drake flung out his other arm sending a sharp, thin tendril shooting towards the computer display by Venom’s tank. It struck a button on the touchpad display and the holding tank lit up with bright light and a wretched noise. Their pain was immediate, and Eddie recoiled in sympathetic horror.

“Stop. Please, stop!”

Drake cut off the sonics, brought that tendril snapping back and traced it under Eddie’s chin, then sent it up, plastering against his temple. “Just try your best.”

It was difficult, but Eddie forced his eyes away from Venom’s tank, closed them, focused desperately on that dream he’d had: the mass consciousness of millions of symbiotes in one endless, swirling sea. Distantly, he could still sense Venom’s mind reaching out to him, but he let it brush past him, a reminder of what was at stake if he failed. In his mind, he let himself fall, imagined his body sinking into the roiling entity and asked, in every way he knew how: “Where are you?”

An answer came, almost immediately and he laughed at the irony of it.

“Something funny?” Drake asked, tendril pushing a little harder against his head.

“They’re still following the standing orders Riot gave them: evade and hide. They won’t give anybody their location except him.”

“Fine.” Drake slammed a tendril back, into the tank of liquified symbiote-matter and siphoned the rest of it into himself, growing a foot taller, and wider as he brought his other hand up to Eddie’s face and grabbed him by the jaw, forcing his mouth open. The symbiotic cells pulled away from Drake’s hand and poured up Eddie’s face, diving into every orifice, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. It dug in deep, driving towards his brain stem. He felt it connect—jolting through him, arcing his spine like a livewire. Riot’s memories and Venom’s clashed together like tidal waves and Eddie was caught between the two of them.

He felt what Drake was trying to do, use him as some kind of a satellite, trying to use his connection to the symbiotes to force out an answer, but it hurt—it was tearing him apart, and Venom knew it too, by the swell of their panic. Eddie felt his consciousness start to go, felt like his skull was about to explode from the pressure and then finally, Drake retracted, pulling those remnants of Riot out of Eddie and back into himself.

Eddie forced his eyes open, looked immediately towards Venom’s tank to make sure they were okay.

Drake, pulled away, rolling his shoulders, Riot’s armor shifting and undulating, reforming as something that looked more like armor than a symbiote. “I’ve got it. I _found_ it,” Drake said satisfied. So satisfied, he didn’t notice the woman that had entered the lab. “Now, I can finally get rid of you,” Drake added, hand shifting into a razor-sharp blade. He brought it to Eddie’s throat. Eddie brought his hand up and managed to grab Drake’s wrist, but it was like trying to hold off a mountain gorilla, he didn’t stand a chance.

But behind Drake, Dora Skirth, very much alive, pushed a button, opening Venom’s tank. Eddie felt the hiss of the tank opening as clearly as though he’d been the one trapped inside and despite the blade pressed against his throat, felt an all-encompassing thrum of hope as Venom streamed through the air, heading for him. Their reunion was instantaneous elation, but they couldn’t spare more than that one moment. Because Drake was pushing harder, and didn’t seem the least bit phased by this turn of events.

Venom enveloped Eddie and they shoved Drake back, sent him stumbling, but only a few feet.

“Good, now I get to kill the both of you, properly!” Drake snarled, increasing the size of the blade as he ran towards them again.

Venom caught his wrists, kept those wicked blades from reaching his throat, but their grip was slipping. Venom redoubled their efforts but Riot—what was left of him, was stronger. Even this, hybrid zombie version of Riot, was still far stronger than Venom.

But then, that hadn’t stopped them before and it wouldn’t now. Eddie sent as much reassurance as he could through his bond, and lent what little strength he had. Their arms were trembling, and Riot’s grip around their throat was tightening, and soon, soon they’d lose, and then Riot would be loose again and everything they’d been through would be for nothing.

 _No_. Eddie thought, resolutely, still pushing back, even as their vision started to go.

And then Dora stepped up behind Riot, wielding a sonic rod and drove it into Riot’s spine.

Riot cried out, peeling back, uncovering Drake’s face. “What did you do?” he asked grasping for the rod, but Dora held steady, keeping the rod where it was as she increased the amplitude. Riot’s teeth reformed, and he swiped a vicious, taloned hand at her.

Venom, sensing their only chance at an upper hand, focused all their energy into their arms, and instead of pushing Riot away, pulled him closer in, opened their mouth wide and ate his head.

The rest of what was left of Drake and Riot stood there for a second, a headless monstrosity, still clawing for the rod in its back. Then, all once, the symbiotic matter lost cohesion and splattered to the floor, Drake’s corpse following behind it.

Dora smiled at Eddie, nodded to herself in satisfaction, and then keeled forward. Eddie caught her just before she hit the ground. 

#

Eddie sat in Dora’s hospital room, watching her sleep. He’d brought her to Dan, the only one he could trust, given the circumstances. They’d been here for three hours now, after leaving Drake’s underground complex—beneath the Presidio Golf Course of all places. On the way out, he’d set off every alarm he could find, and then dropped an anonymous call to the police. They’d find what was left of his corpse and his experiments and add another chapter to the Life Foundation story.

 ** _Hungry_** , Venom intoned, wearily, voice rumbling against Eddie’s skin.

After getting Dora to the hospital, he’d stripped out of the clothing he’d spent the last few weeks in, eager to get out of them, but realized he had nothing to change into. He considered asking Dan if he had anything, but instead, Venom spilled over Eddie, approximating a pretty darn convincing facsimile of black t-shirt and jeans. It felt good, comforting, to be surrounded by Venom, after they’d been separated for so long.

 ** _Dinner_** , Venom said, more insistently.

“Soon, I promise.” Eddie flexed his hand, Venom flowed down his arm, formed a hand over his, and entwined their fingers together.

“Hey,” Dora said, stirring awake. “I’d ask you who you were talking to, but I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“Don’t know if you were ever properly introduced,” Eddie said, as Venom’s hand pulled away from his. “Venom, this is Dora, Dora this is Venom.”

 **“You saved us,”** Venom said, a small symbiote head protruding discreetly from Eddie’s chest. **“Thank you.”**

“Same to you,” Dora said. “I don’t remember everything, but I know I wouldn’t be here, now, if it wasn’t for you.”

“How are you feeling?” Eddie asked.

“Confused. But alive. And I know I was—“ Dora paused, swallowed. “How long was I, uh…”

“Dead?” Eddie shook his head. “Not sure, exactly. You may have been in cryo the whole time, so not entirely dead. But best I can figure, six months.”

Dora’s eyes widened, going glassy. “Oh god. Do Sandy and Jenny know that I’m—“

“They’re on their way,” Dan said, from the door. He came in, closing the door behind him. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Just—a headache, but very much alive.” Dora smiled at him, but there was an edge to it, a hint of fear strong enough that Eddie couldn’t help but see it. “Is there—do I have anything else inside of me?”

“Scans show no traces of any symbiotes or symbiotic tissue,” Dan said, “And in even better news, you show no signs of atrophy to any of your organs.”

“That’s—” Dora nodded to herself, and swallowed, smiling with obvious relief. “That’s remarkable. And really unexpected.”

“ **We left instructions in Eddie** ,” Venom said, small serpentine head producing a much louder and deeper voice than should be possible. “ **On what to do and not to do. What was left of Agony received those instructions when they bonded with Eddie before reuniting with you.** ”

“Wait, did you—did none of you know how to bond with humans before?”

“ **How would we? We’d never been to Earth. And your species is constructed very poorly**.”

“Good point.” Eddie stroked Venom’s head absently. “Well, I’m glad you did.”

“Oh my god—Dora!” came a voice from the door.

Eddie turned to see a blond woman standing in the door with a girl of maybe seven; they both ran into the room, the girl shouting “mommy!” as she leapt on the bed and threw her arms around Dora.

The family reunited in a happy silence, interrupted only by the sniffling away of tears. After a few minutes, the blond woman stood and crossed the floor to Eddie.

“Hi, I’m Sandy. Did you find her?”

Eddie nodded, and Sandy threw her arms around him crushing him into a hug, “Thank you, thank you so much.” She pulled back and another, smaller set of arms encircled Eddie—or his arm and shoulder anyway. “We missed her so much,” the girl said. She pressed a kiss against Eddie’s cheek and then ran back to Dora’s side.

Dora laughed through happy tears, while Eddie swallowed down a lump in his throat. He still felt like it was his fault she’d been killed in the first place. And he didn’t want to sour the happy family reunion by staying any longer.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dan said, heading for the door.

“I should go home, too.” Eddie stood, and gave them a wave.

“Oh yeah, of course,” Dora said. “When I’m home again, when we’ve had a chance to get back to some kind of normal—you’re gonna come over for dinner, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie said, nodding in agreement before he headed through the door.

Dan was waiting for him in the hall. “Anything you need, Eddie? A ride home? Dinner, maybe? I’m sure Anne would—“

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “Thanks, Dan seriously—for everything. But I just want to go home and get some sleep.”

“Good plan,” Dan said. “We’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Eddie said, and stuck his hands into his pockets. As he headed down the stairs, wishing he had his hoodie, Venom pooled out, the thin T-shirt fabric they’d mimicked thickening and stretched themselves down Eddie’s arms becoming a perfect facsimile of a thicker cotton blend, complete with hood, that Eddie pulled up and over his head.

It felt good, having Venom all around him, reminded him, that he wasn’t alone anymore. Deep in his gut, he felt a desperate need to never be alone again.

Eddie hugged him tighter, echoing that sentiment.

#

They headed home, but made a stop on the way to get some food.

“You were gone a long time, Eddie”, Mrs. Chen said, as he passed by the counter, her voice soft with concern.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He looked at her from the corner of his eye as he headed for the snack aisle. “Everything okay here?”

“Yes, I'm okay, the store is okay." She cleared her throat. “Is your friend okay?”

Eddie closed his fist, Venom pooling up into his palm in response. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“I’ve got your favorite in the back.”

Mrs. Chen had taken to keeping large stores of their favorite foods in the back freezers so they wouldn't sell out: restaurant sized eight pound bags of tater tots, crates of Hershey's bars. "Thanks, Mrs. C. We'll be back for those tomorrow. Just need something for tonight for now." Eddie could feel a vague sense of disappointment from Venom, but they were so exhausted it wasn't even really a protest. When they got back upstairs and made sure everything was safe they were going to go to bed and sleep for three days.

Eddie grabbed a packaged sandwich, two Hershey bars and a loaf of bread. He couldn’t remember what was in the refrigerator, but it couldn't be much, and anything perishable was likely spoiled anyway. But he didn't have the energy to get more at the moment. He brought his armful of items to the counter, and reached for the twenty Dan had loaned him. His wallet was still at home, in theory, and he'd lost his keys somewhere in the shuffle, but he'd figure out a way inside.

"Rough few weeks?" Mrs. Chen asked.

“I’ve had better.”

"Glad you're back," she said, and reached over the counter, grabbing two king-size candy bars from the bins below. "On the house," she said, giving Eddie's hand a quick squeeze. "For your friend."

"Thanks," Eddie said, Venom’s voice reverberating, layered on top of Eddie’s. "Sorry we were gone so long."

Mrs. Chen straightened, and put on a mock-serious face. "You should be. Don't let it happen again."

Eddie cracked a smile. "We'll try not to." He took his bag under his arm and headed back out into the warm, evening air.

#

Breaking into his own apartment ended up being easier than he’d expected. One of his windows never closed right, so they slid a small tendril through the gap, unlocked it and climbed inside.

After taking out the garbage, which stank so strongly it made Eddie’s eyes tear, he opened all the windows, to air out the place, and dug out his spare keys—the ones that had belonged to Anne—from his sock drawer.

Everything was as he’d left it. Nobody had been here, that he could tell. He’d considered briefly, moving, but what good would that do. Anybody who really wanted to find him would, no matter where he went. And the one person who’d consistently tried to kill him was dead—for real this time. Eddie looked down towards his belly, wondering how long it took Venom to digest a head. Considering how hungry he was, the answer was clearly faster than expected.

He looked at his couch, considered eating his sandwich there so he could fall asleep immediately afterwards, but found he didn’t want to. What he wanted was to see the sky.

Methodically, he closed all the windows, grabbed his bag of food and headed for the roof. They weren’t supposed to go up there, really, but he was fairly sure nobody would give him a hard time. Especially not the super, who was friends with Mrs. Chen and had been remarkably lenient with Eddie in recent months.

The air was cooler up on the roof, but the breeze was warm. He picked a spot near the edge where he could just see the ocean on the horizon, and sat cross legged.

It took him less than three minutes to polish off the sandwich and one of the candy bars, Venom eagerly unwrapping the second and downing it in one swallow.

Sated, for the time being,  Eddie rested his back against one of the ventilation pipes sticking out of the roof. Venom spread out behind him providing cushioning, until they felt a whole lot like a pillow.

Eddie finally felt the tension start to leave his body, shoulders relaxing, jaw unclenching. He let his eyes start to drift shut, relishing in the feel of Venom supporting him.

There was a soft, barely perceptible vibration coming from Venom that reminded Eddie of a cat purring. Of course he didn’t dare voice that thought, for fear Venom would take it as an insult and shove him off, but of course, they could just as easily pluck the thought from his brain.

But they didn’t. The only thing coming from Venom was a thrum of contentment, and occasional, softly gripping pulses, like they were clutching at Eddie, making sure he was still there.

Eddie returned the gesture, grabbing hold of a bit of his Venom-made-hoodie. He squeezed it, hard. “I missed you so much.”

Venom responded by covering his hand tightly. **_As did I._**

“That can’t happen again. I can’t—I can’t go through that again.”

**_We eliminated Drake. The immediate threat is gone._ **

“There’s always other threats. Other bad guys. Some of them smart. And somebody else is gonna have it out for us, one of these days.”

Venom wound themselves more tightly around Eddie’s arm, and extruded a bit, forming a small head that looked at Eddie earnestly. “ ** _The longer we are joined, the harder it will be to separate us. And there are other things we can do. To make it more difficult, to make us less vulnerable to sound._** ”

“Yeah? Such as?”

“Neither of us have the energy for it tonight, but I will teach you,” Venom closed back in on Eddie, swirled back around him, until Eddie was wrapped in a full-body embrace. **_We will not let it happen again._**

They lay, in companionable silence, looking out at the skyline, the sky a thousand shades of blue as the first touches of dawn began to tint the ocean.

Eddie looked up at the darkest parts, the scattered stars straight above them. “Do you miss them, ever?”

**_Who?_ **

“Them, your—the others—being part of a group mind like that it—doesn’t this feel lonely in comparison?”

**_No. I am never lonely when we are together. I was far lonelier amongst the others of my kind._ **

“How’s that possible? There’s millions of them.”

**_And yet not a single one of them understood me as well as you._ **

Eddie found himself smiling. He wrapped his arms around himself. “Yeah, same.”

The sky was bleeding purple, with bright pink and orange stripes below as the sun broke the horizon. It was beautiful, and Eddie let his eyes drift shut again as the air grew warmer around him.

They fell asleep there, holding each other, and they were not alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
